Social PsychologyPSY450

Instructor: Briana Harvey

Welcome!

• Defining Aggression and Antisocial Behavior

• Is Aggression Innate or Learned?

• Inner Causes of Aggression

Aggression and Antisocial Behavior

Is This Aggression?Armin Meiwes Bernd Brandes

Aggression An intentional behavior

Intent is to harm

Not accidental harmNot assertiveness or playfulness

The victim wants to avoid harm

Example of aggression: Shooting someone who is running away from you

Not aggression: A doctor gives a painful shot

Defining Aggression and Antisocial Behavior

Violence Aggression, with the goal of extreme physical harm,

such as injury or death

All violent acts are aggressive acts, but not all aggressive acts are violent

A child pushes another child out of the way Aggression, but not violence

A child beats another child severely with a baseball bat Aggression that is also violence

Intense Aggression

• Can be direct (person is physically present) or indirect (person physically absent)

• Men = direct aggression

– hit someone, yell in their face

• Women = indirect aggression

– set house on fire, spread rumors

Aggression

• Passive aggression – Harming others by withholding a

behavior (purposely failing to convey an important message)

• Active aggression – Harming others by performing a

behavior (spreading vicious rumors)

Types of Aggression

• Reactive/Hostile Aggression – Hot, impulsive

– Desire to hurt someone

• Proactive/Instrumental Aggression – Cold, premeditated

– Motivated by some other goal (money, revenge)

Types of Aggression

• Aggression is universal

– Cultural rules restrain aggression

– Hand signals, body language…

• Significant decrease in aggressive acts throughout history

• Murder rate in England

– 14th century: 24 per 100,000 people

– 1960s: 0.6 per 100,000 people

Aggression in Human History

• Rules of conduct for war

– Geneva Convention

• Four treaties that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war

– Negotiated in the aftermath of the Second World War

Aggression

• Freud proposed human motivational forces are based on instinct

– Instinct: an innate tendency to seek a particular goal

– Water, food, sex

• According to Freud:– Sex/Food – life giving instinct (Eros)

– Aggression – death instinct (Thanatos)

Instinct Theories of Aggression

• Social learning theory (Observational Learning)– People learn from observing the

behavior of others, and observing the outcomes of that behavior

– We acquire attitudes, emotional responses, and behavior patterns

Social Learning Theory

• Albert Bandura and his colleagues at Stanford University conducted an experiment in 1965

– Observational learning of aggression in children

– They show preschoolers a short film of a person beating up a bobo doll.

– Three different endings watched by three different groups of children.

Bandura Bobo Doll Experiments

• Consequence 1: model-rewarded condition

– After the person beating up the bobo doll, the person is rewarded with candy.

– Result: The preschoolers acted violently towards the bobo doll

• Consequence 2: model-punished condition

– After the person beating up the bobo doll, the person is scolded and spanked.

– Result: The preschoolers act non-violently towards the bobo doll

Bandura Bobo Doll Experiment

• Consequence 3: no-consequences condition– Preschoolers didn’t watch any consequence

after beating up the bobo doll.

– Result: The preschoolers acted violently towards the bobo doll.

– This suggested that a mere exposure to TV violence ,whether or not the violence was visibly rewarded on screen, could spur aggressive responses in young children.

Bandura Bobo Doll Experiment

Bandura Bobo Doll Experiment

• Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment

– Modeling of aggressive behavior

Social Learning Theory.

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Bandura

• Cultural socialization and learning can increase or decrease innate aggressive impulses and aggressive behaviors

• Both learning and instinct are relevant

Nature AND Nurture

• Can you remember the last incident of aggression you witnessed in which you knew the aggressor.

• Was frustration a factor?

• What happened right before the aggression?

Question….

• Frustration-aggression hypothesis (1939)– The occurrence of aggressive

behavior always comes before the existence of frustration

– Frustration always leads to some form of aggression

Inner Causes of Aggression

• Frustration: Blockage or interference of goal

• You can have aggression without frustration, frustration without aggression

– But aggression is increased by frustration

Not True!

• Unpleasant moods increase aggression

– Bad mood is not necessary for aggression

• Excitation transfer may increase aggression

Inner Causes of Aggression

• Hostile attribution bias

– Perceive ambiguous actions by others as aggressive

Hostile Cognitive Biases

• Hostile expectation bias– Assume people will react to potential

conflicts with aggression

Hostile Cognitive Biases

• Aggressive people have inner biases that make them:– Expect others to react aggressively

– View ambiguous acts as aggressive

– Assume others act purposefully when they hurt or offend them

Hostile Cognitive Biases

• 25% of toddler interactions in day-care settings involve physical aggression

– Even violent teenagers don’t involve 25% of aggressive interactions!

– BUT it is aggression…NOT violence!

– Most violent aggression occurs between

15 and 30 years.

– Average age of murders: 27 years

Age and Aggression

• Interpersonal Causes of Aggression

• External Causes of Aggression

• Self and Culture

• Other Antisocial Behavior

Aggression

• Aggression

– Can be a means to resolve social disputes

– Can be a form of social influence

• Factors that encourage use of aggression

– More you want the reward

– Someone you love in threatened

– Believe you will be successful

– Sports game

Selfishness and Influence

• Domestic violence

– Occurs within the home between people who have a close relationship

– Aggression is highest between siblings!

• In 1984, Surgeon General declared domestic violence the number one health risk in U.S.

– #1 cause of injuries to women ages 15-44

Domestic and Relationship Violence

• Children and elderly are at highest risk for abuse

• Abusive partners also tend to be abusive parents (Ross, 1996)

• Parents abused as children are more likely to abuse their own children (Cappell & Heiner, 1990)

– But doesn’t mean they necessarily will

• Culture is slowly intervening, making it unacceptable and punishable

– Illegal to spank in 24 countries

Domestic and Relationship Violence

• Weapons effect– Mere presence of weapon increases

aggressive behavior

– Weapons (guns, knifes, swords, etc.) are associated with aggression, and therefore they increase the accessibility of associated aggressive thoughts which in turn facilitate aggressive behavior

External Causes of Aggression

Turner et al. (1975)

• Mass media– Violent media exposure increases

aggression

– Huesmann, et al. (2003)

– 15 year long study of 329 people who watch violent TV and those who don’t

– Those who watched violent TV as a kid were 3x more likely to be convicted of criminal behavior

– They were also more likely to abuse their spouses

External Causes of Aggression

• 2001 estimate: by time US child 10 years’ old will have seen 8,000 murders and 100,000+ other acts of violence on TV

– 58% of all TV programs contain violence

– 40% of violent acts by heroes

• Controlled experiments find effect of viewing a violent program/playing violent video games on aggressive behavior but only in children who already have aggressive tendencies

Violence in the Media

Violence in the Media

Three reasons to believe that violent video games are worse than TV

1.Video games are active and people learn better when they are actively involved2.Players of violent video games are more likely to identify with a violent character

• Ex. First person shooter games3.Video games reward violent behavior

• Ex. “Nice shot” and bonus points

• Unpleasant Environments

– Hot temperatures are associated with aggression and violence

– Loud noises, foul odors, air pollution, and crowding can increase aggression

External Causes of Aggression

• Studies have found that regions with hotter temperatures have higher violent crime rates

• Time period studies have found higher violence rates in hot years, hot months and hot days

• In a study that looked at temperature and crime rates over 45 years

– Murder and assault higher in hotter years

– Higher during hotter months

– Nonviolent crimes were not affected by temperature

External Causes of Aggression

• Number of players hit during major league baseball games

Effects of environmental stressors on aggressive behaviour.

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• Freedman (1977) suggested that physiological arousal of a crowd heighten the mood you are in. In some situations a crowd may be enjoyable e.g. concert, or undesirable in other situations e.g. riot therefore you might feel stressed and behave anti-socially.

Effects of environmental stressors on aggressive behaviour

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• Chemical Influences

– Testosterone

– Male sex hormone

– Although females have it also

– A meta-analysis of 54 studies found that testosterone increases aggression

– Violent male prisoners have higher levels of testosterone

Chemical Influences

– Serotonin

– “Feel good” neurotransmitter

– Low levels linked to aggression

– Prisoners convicted of impulsive crimes (seeing red!) have lower levels of serotonin than those who commit a premeditated crime

Chemical Influences

– Alcohol

– Linked to increased aggression

– Meta-analysis of 130 studies found a positive correlation between alcohol and criminal and domestic violence

– Then a meta-analysis of experimental studies came to the same conclusion. That alcohol increases aggression

Chemical Influences

• How alcohol influences aggression

– Reduces inhibitions

– Narrowing effect on attention

– Decreases self-awareness

– Disrupts executive function

Alcohol and Aggression

• The text reports that 50% of people that commit a violent crime do so when intoxicated. What are the implications of this?

1.If people commit violent acts while intoxicated should we hold them more responsible because they chose to consume a substance that would allow them to be more aggressive or less responsible since it was the substance that allowed them to do be more aggressive?

2.If we want to reduce aggression should we regulate alcohol to a greater degree or make alcohol more costly so it is more expensive to get intoxicated?

Class Exercise

• Dr. Bernard Gesch

– A physiologist of the University of Oxford

• Nutrition is linked to aggression and violence

– Junk food can increase violence

– Vitamin supplements reduces antisocial behavior

Food for Thought - Is There a Link Between Diet and Violence?

• Poor self-control

– Is an important cause of crime

– Is a predictor of violent crimes

– Most criminals have impulsive personalities

– 2006 World Cup Final

Self-Control

• Violent individuals

– Think they are better than other people

– Have grandiose or inflated opinions of their worth

– Narcissists

– Respond with high levels of aggression when they receive a blow to their ego

Wounded Pride

• Southern U.S. has culture of honor

– Violent response to threats to one’s honor

– Higher levels of violence

• Humiliation

– Primary cause of violence and aggression in cultures of honor

– May be an important cause of terrorism

Culture of Honor

• Lying– Not telling the truth– Detecting liars is not that easy

• Cheating– Self-control is important predictor of cheating

• Stealing– People in anonymous state more likely to

steal– Diener et al. (1976) study of Halloween

candy

Other Antisocial Behavior

• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/criminal-minds.html